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In the lead up to today’s budget, the
National Education Union (NEU) set the Chancellor six tests on education
funding. Those tests were:

Reverse school cuts now;

New money from the Treasury;

High needs, early years and post-16 sectors to be fairly
funded;

A 5 year funding plan for schools and colleges;

Historic underfunding addressed;

All pay rises fully implemented and funded.

In his Budget Statement to Parliament there
was hardly any mention of education. The only real commitment was that there
would be an extra £400m for schools as a one-off capital payment so that each
primary school would get £10,000 and each secondary school £50,000. However,
this is not a permanent increase in schools funding but just a small amount of
money for the ‘little extras’ every school needs!

There were a couple of other commitments
made in the Statement. More money was given to Local Councils but how much of
that goes into the education pot is unknown and will probably vary in each
local council. Another commitment was the formation of young peoples mental
health crisis teams in each NHS region but there needs to be more details of
this initiative and especially how .schools and colleges fit into this
proposal.

So overall not a good budget for education
funding. None of the six tests have been addressed so now it will be up to the
NEU membership to decide what they want to do about this lack of funding for
education.

Prepare for Action over Pay

Many
teachers in England are wondering what has happened to their pay. By this time
last year, the Tory Government had decided what their response to the School
Teacher Pay Review Body Report would be and published it. The Government’s
excuse was that the election had intervened and delayed their consideration of
the report. Whilst many of us would welcome another election, it cannot be an
excuse for the Government’s delay this year.

So why the
delay in making a decision about our pay for this year? The answer seems to lie
in the Treasury. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appears to be
reluctant to agree an increase for teachers. We know that the Government
received the report at the beginning of May but since then there has been
silence over any response by the Government. We know that Damian Hinds, the
Secretary of State for Education, has been trying to get an agreement with the
Treasury on the funding for schools and colleges but we don’t know the outcome
of these negotiations.

This
situation poses many difficulties for teachers. Rumours abound. Some say the
Government will agree an increase of 3.5%, other rumours predict that it will
be unfunded, others that it will be funded. Our claim, supported by most of the
teacher unions was for 5% for all. So, what are the scenarios the National
Education Union (NEU) could face:

·The
first scenario is how near to 5% the pay award is. Is 3.5% acceptable? It
certainly breaks the pattern of ‘pay restraint’ we have had to endure over the
last seven years but it doesn’t really make much of a mark on the on the 15+%
pay cut we have had since 2010.

·The
second scenario is if the pay award is fully funded. Many may find this
acceptable because it would leave us free to campaign on workload, curriculum
changes and other campaigns. However, that for others may depend on how near to
5% the pay award is.

·The
third scenario is if the pay award is not fully funded or only partially
funded. In the main schools do not have reserves to meet unfunded or partially
funded pay award. So, the money to pay staff would come, fully or partially,
from the existing schools’ budgets. In this case many schools may decide not to
follow the Government’s advice and there would be a danger of effectively
breaking the national pay scales.

It is this
third scenario that is the most dangerous for the NEU. Certainly, the
Government will be seeking to limit the damage to its existing pay policy. It
has agreed that pay awards this year can be more than 1% but so far none in the
public sector have gone beyond 3%. We know that Philip Hammond and the Treasury
were not very happy with May’s decision to increase the funding to the NHS by
£20million. Will they permit an increase for teachers to be fully funded? It
seems very unlikely.

So, what
should our response to this situation be. First, we must recognise that if the
pay award is not funded then the Government is throwing down a challenge to the
NEU and the other teacher unions. Secondly, we need to recognise that the delay
in making the Government’s position on the Pay Review Report is deliberate.
They are playing for time knowing that if they can string it out for a couple
more weeks then the chances of any action this term are very slim. So, the
second point we need to make is that we need to start the process of informing
and discussing with our members now. Concretely this must mean union meetings
in schools, as soon as possible, to make our position clear, any award must be
fully funded. We need to make it clear that we will meet any attempt to divide
and rule by not fully funding the pay award, by national action. We need to
make clear to our Executive members that our members support such action. Only
in this way can our members be prepared for any action if the Government tries
to avoid paying us a fully funded pay award.

Jon Duveen, Cambridgeshire NUT Section.

Resources for teaching about Palestine

The STA has consistently campaigned for solidarity with the Palestinian people against their oppression by the Israeli government. STA members have recently been involved in developing teaching resources to help teachers in schools teach about the conflict.

Items 1 and 3 can be downloaded from the Education for Liberation page.

The Education Debate

Articles from the STA magazine, Education for Liberation, can be viewed by clicking on the links below or downloaded from the Education for Liberation page.

The battle for the curriculum by John Yandell

In a previous edition of Education for Liberation John Yandell argued that Michael Gove doesn’t just want to ration access to education; he wants to keep it just as it used to be, in the good old days (that never were). The schooling that was good enough for Gladstone is good enough for Gove and good enough for the youth of today.Read more.

Myths of assessment by John Yandell

I want to
explore five aspects or strands of the way in which we tend to think about
assessment.In calling
these strands myths, I am suggesting two things. First, that they are both
powerful and deeply embedded in our assumptions about assessment: they have
become, in other words, common sense.Second, that they are, in important ways, untrue and unhelpful,
obstacles that make it harder for us to arrive at more accurate and adequate
understandings of assessment.Read more

Gove:reactionary or moderniser? asks Martin Allen

Despite his polished performance in the Commons – in the absence of any real Labour opposition –
Michael Gove is not ‘modernising’ the qualification system at all. Neither do his proposals have anything to do
with improving ‘international competitiveness’. On the contrary, Gove is continuing the Tory Right’s obsession
with protecting the ‘standards’ of the few from the aspirations of the majority – attempting to restore an
educational agenda thought to have been discarded long ago. His policies, if implemented, can only make
schools more unequal still. Read more

Creating readers by Mike Rosen

I’ve sometimes said that reading books in schools is a subversive activity. This seems counter-intuitive. Schools are surely places which foster the idea that the written text is one of the best means of carrying ideas and knowledge.Read more

Standard Values

What the Tory-led Coalition has in mind for the future of teaching is revealed very clearly in a new version of the Teachers’ Standards, which is to replace one of the more bizarre publications of the New Labour era.Read more

GCSEs and assessment

What are tests for? Do we have a system that needs a bit of tweaking, or are these problems more fundamental?Read more